Episode 11: Ephesians 5:21-6:9: How do we handle provocative passages of Scripture? A conversation with Sarah Allen
We're delighted to be joined by Sarah Allen as we consider our penultimate passage in Ephesians today. Sarah works as an English teacher and is involved in pastoral care and training of women in her local church and across the UK. She’s the author of Pause: How to enjoy God, find hope and bear fruit through midlife and the menopause and Clothed with Strength: Four Women who Built the Church and Changed the World.
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What struck you most from our conversation with Sarah?
How do these verses continue to help us see God's big picture for his church?
Take some time to pray through the verses that feel most pertinent to you in your current season of life.
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This episode is sponsored by Crossway.
Crossway publish gospel-centered, Bible-based content that honours our Savior and serves his church. They seek to help people understand the massive implications of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word, for all of life, for all eternity, and for the glory of God.
Check out their website for all their up-to-date resources.
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The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Sarah: You're listening to the Two Sisters and a Cup of Tea podcast, the Bible study podcast for everyday life. We're here for a 20 minute burst of Bible chat over a cup of tea and an English style biscuit as we make our way through a Bible book over the course of the season and drive it to our hearts. And this season we're in Ephesians. Whether you've been listening for a while or have just found us, we are so pleased that you're here.
Felicity: This season has been sponsored by Crossway. And having heard about this book a while ago, I've been looking forward to reading it. It's Dust to Dust by Jen Wilkin. Jen's writing has impacted me significantly over the years and this book is no different. She sets out to help her reader consider aging and dying in light of the true story of the Bible. Not only does she equip us to age well, but also to care for those who are aging and dying well. She takes the arc of life and the matching parallels of the different stages along the way and with Biblical insight and exegesis seeks to shift our understanding and help us rebuff the messages that we hear all the time in our society. I really highly recommend this book. Grab a copy at crossway.org.
Welcome to Two Sisters in a Cup of Tea. My name is Felicity. I'm here in the States. I'm here with my sister Sarah. She's in the UK. And this week we're delighted to have with us Sarah Allen. She's in the UK as well. And she's coming to join us for a good old cuppa this week. Sarah is someone who loves to teach the Bible. She loves to write books. She lives in the north of England. We've known each other for a number of years, but haven't actually seen each other's faces for a while. Sarah, so good to have you with us. Thank you for joining us.
Sarah A: Thanks very much for inviting me, it's lovely to see you.
Sarah: What's your favourite cup of tea Sarah? What do go for?
Sarah A: What I have here right now is Earl Grey with some milk in it, so enjoying that currently.
Felicity: Classic.
Sarah: And a biscuit to go with it?
Sarah A: I would always opt for shortbread if it's on offer, a buttery rich decadent shortbread.
Felicity: Oh decadent, exactly, that's what I think of, especially because they often come in nice tins, don't you think? They dress up shortbread and kind of like, this is a treat. Yeah. Love it. Exactly, exactly.
Sarah: Brilliant, very good. Yeah. In a tin. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us in our journey through Ephesians. We're kind of nearing the end of Ephesians. We're kind of at the end of chapter five today into chapter six. And we've been hearing about God's amazing plan for the church as we've gone through. But we've also been talking about, as we've gone through, just this tension that exists because for many of us, walking into church doesn't feel like what's always described in this letter. And that's no different for the three of us, we'll have different experiences with church over the years. And I just wonder whether you can, as we start this conversation, you can just talk a little bit on what it looks like to navigate that tension that we will all feel at various different points.
Sarah A: Thanks Sarah, that's such a good question. You're absolutely right, it's something that we all experience as Christians, isn't it, that? And can be so heart breaking, so painful when church is difficult because we have such a beautiful picture and we know it's so important, we know it's central to God's plan for the world. I think it has a lot in common with so many other areas of our life where we see what the Lord has planned for us and yet life doesn't measure up. It's part of the kind of now and not yet, within the muck and the mire and the difficulties of life. And yet we know God has a glorious plan and it's getting at a climax and seeing him face to face. So we struggle with this now and not yet in all kinds of areas, but particularly it's hard, think, walking into church, as you say. And some of that is because, you know, we're living our lives with often people we've chosen to spend time with, we're doing a career we've chosen maybe, or we've chosen to have children or we've chosen friends and we don't choose church. We're with people who are not like us so much the time or at least we should be with people not like us, shouldn't we, in church. We're with people of different ages, of different classes, of different ethnic origins, different life experiences, even sometimes different theological convictions and that can be rocky and bumpy. But I think reading through Ephesians, I've just been really struck by this just in how Christ-centered it is. Everything, every instruction Paul gives us takes us back to who Jesus is, this amazing mystery of unity with him. And so I think in our difficulties, fixing our eyes in Jesus and together collectively fixing our eyes on him in worship, when we kind of humble ourselves, because that's what worship is, humbling ourselves to praise God, to acknowledge who he is, to sing together, to pray together to recognise then all we have in unity. I think that's where the answer starts, is in worshipping together as God's people, praying together and sitting humbly together under His word as well.
Sarah: Yeah, so helpful.
Felicity: I love that, yeah, sitting humbly together. And we've noticed as we've gone through Ephesians again this time around, like just together, together, together, it's just so there all the way through, isn't it? And so that is the way that God has designed it and therefore it is right and good, even when it's hard and kind of crunchy and just doesn't quite smooth out as we would have it.
Sarah: No. Yeah. Well, let's get into today's passage. So today we are in chapter five and we're going from verse 21 through to six, verse nine, and I'm going to read that for us now. Let's go. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Saviour.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exacerbate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not people because you know that the Lord will reward each one of you for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him.”
Felicity: Thank you Sarah, wow what a passage. I wonder how it's landing with people. It's one of those isn't it? It's famous and it's provocative and so Sarah Allen, I've sort got two Sarah’s here, as you're reading this now what would you draw our attention to first and foremost as we're in these verses?
Sarah A: Great question. I think it really flows on from what I was just saying about what Paul is saying about the church. He just says again and again and again, we're in Christ, we're together in Christ, what the love that God has shown us. And all of this flows, doesn't it? The kind of headings and the chapter numbers aren't in positions and actually almost if we took them out we'd see more clearly how this passage just flows out because it's all about the Lord. All of those instructions are obeying in the Lord for his for him for his glory out of reverence for him husband's love and wives following Christ's pattern but also for him because the focus is on holiness for the Lord isn't it of the wife so all of this all the way through every single instruction it centre’s around the Lord doing these things for the Lord it's not about us it's not about us wanting to achieve the perfect lifestyle or the happiest marriage or the or the kind of most wonderful family life or the best work life. It is about the Lord Jesus and his purposes in our life and about us looking like Jesus and honouring him in that way.
Sarah: So, so good to see that, isn't it? Just the fact that, yeah, in every other part of the letter we've had the same kind of refrain, that it's all in Christ, it's for Christ, it's through him, and as you say, it's no different here, is it? It really isn't, it's all kind of with Christ over all and through all and that's just so helpful to have that pointed out for us with how it's been repeated all the way through. Why do you think this picture of marriage and family and work are included here and why do think we need to hear it?
Sarah A: Yeah, we can kind of sail on happily through Ephesians, we? And they go, bump, this is, as you said, the provocative passage. I think there'll be a lot of people throughout the church who go, like, I just don't want this bit. We want the rest of it. We want all the nice instructions about living peacefully together. We're happy with those things about not slandering each other, not being deceitful. But we don't particularly want this. The Lord knows we need it because all of life is under God's rule, isn't it? He cares about every single bit. And I think also we take our ideas and our instructions from the world around us, just as in Paul's day, there were like books of instruction of household codes where everybody had to follow, this is what wives should do, this is what husbands should do. Much more about what the husbands and the slave masters and their fathers should do, less so about the other people. But the people receiving this letter were hearing secular or their own religious traditions, they were hearing that, those codes and those ideas and unless they're challenged, they would go on like that, living in a way just following their culture. And we would just do the same, won’t we? We would just carry on, you know, we're taking our advice about being a parent from, I don't know the internet or from the most popular book doing the rounds or in terms of marriage, TV or whatever, we would just follow that. We have to have every aspect of life transformed by the gospel. And so that's what Paul's doing here. But even more so, especially with marriage, because of what he says here, that marriage is this beautiful picture of Christ in the church. So it's not just we'll be influenced by the world, but actually this, we have to get this right or we have to at least be asking God's help to get this right and have his picture for marriage because within his design for the universe this is a picture he's designed to show the world what it means that Christ has come and has won a bride for himself and loves that bride and is united to that bride so that's why it's so important why we need to hear it and I think the message is as radical today as it was radical then. I think it's maybe easier to think this wasn't radical back in the day. This is just like, everybody was patriarchal then or everybody was like they all had slaves and nobody cared about it. But it was radical then, it's radical now because it kind of cuts between the polar ways we would fall either being super authoritarian and hierarchical or like everybody, like it doesn't matter, we're all individuals, we just do our own thing. This passage just cuts in across both of those extremes gives us something which is so beautiful.
Felicity: And I think a part of it is trusting that this is beautiful and that it does display the beauty of Christ and the church and so sitting in that and I mean I've always been struck as I've gone through this passage, especially the marriage section just how many instructions are for the husband and there's only I really for the wife is simply submit to this husband who is seeking to be Christ-like. He might get it wrong because we're sinners but ultimately the instruction, the call to the husband, as you say, and in that Christ-like call, cutting through any other way, any other advice, either which way of that. And that being, I think, no, go for it, yeah.
Sarah A: Yeah, it's so clear it's so clear it's not about just the husband having his way, it's about the husband submitting to Christ and out of his submission to Christ he lays down his life for his wife. That is the pattern isn't it? It's a sacrificial. So we've got submission in all these because every single person here has to submit to the Lord and that submission looks like sacrificial service to other people and particularly to these key people in our lives, the parents' sacrifices for sake of the child and sacrifice is what they want to do to instruct for the Lord. They have to go, it's not about my pet things or how I want to run my family. It's actually training for the discipline of the Lord. And similarly in marriage, it's about the husband has to serve in a way to bring glory to Christ and to help his wife spiritually in every possible way. And the wife loves her husband and submits to husbands and respects her husband out of reverence for the Lord. I was reading something that talked about this kind non-symmetrical submission. So we all submit that it's not a symmetrical submission. It's not only one part submission. We all submit that it's not symmetrical. It's not equivalent. Everybody submits in a different way depending on the place that Lord has put us.
Felicity: That's such a helpful way of thinking about it and I think just yes seeing that I love it when I think about it in that in that way as we're all submitting under Christ was submitting to him and in response to that then my husband is seeking to, I love that phrase when he says in verse 27 present me had present her to himself as a radiant church like that. I know it's talking about the church at that point, but in the same way verse 28 husbands ought to then is seeking for my own spiritual good. The reason why my husband is called to love me like this is for my good before the Lord. Just as you were saying about the parents and the sacrificial act there for the children's good before the Lord. And it's having a big picture in that, it? And it's bringing the Ephesians perspective to this rather than the world's perspective and sitting in that big picture that's been given to us in the whole letter.
Sarah A: Absolutely, absolutely. And the beautiful language here that Paul uses to describe how Christ serves and loves the church, sort of all these verbs, this cleansing by the washing of water to making her holy and blameless and the feeding of the body and the care of the body. It's so kind of nurturing and attentive, isn't it?
Sarah: Tender isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I think having had such a massive picture of Christ's love given to us through the rest of Ephesians, I find it astounding that he would then say, do you know what, I'm going to use your marriages as examples of this love and I'm going to, like you're going to display the glory of God as you seek to live this out in the design that he set forth here. And that's amazing, isn't it? That he would choose to use us in our weakness, all the flaws that we bring to it, that he would still say, this is a picture. And people can look on and see Christ's love in the way that family life looks in this way.
Sarah A: Yeah, he elevates these little things, doesn't he, to make them of such significance and these things that the world doesn't really want to talk about because it's uncomfortable to talk about marriage and dynamics in marriage because we have such an individualistic culture. But the Lord says, no, this together, this union is beautiful in its nitty gritty.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so it's kind of a slightly different question on this as we think about this. For those of us leading Bible studies on this part of Ephesians, but also on maybe, you know, other provocative passages in general, how do we do that well, bearing in mind the range of women in a group at any time and that there's baggage that comes with a passage like this? How do we lead people through a passage like this well?
Sarah A: Great question again, thank you. Yeah, I think I was wrestling when I was thinking about this. We have to acknowledge the baggage, don't we? And the preconceptions and the kind of things that we've been brought up in. have to be aware of those and acknowledge them, but we just don't want that to dominate and to take over. So I think it's important to go, yeah, I have, I'm in a world where, I'm in a working world where there's no sense of difference between men and women allowed to be acknowledged. Marriage itself is seen as suspect. That's just kind of the work environment I'm in. So we have to acknowledge that and how it affects us and that some of us, some people sitting in Bible studies might be fully, fully taken, accepting of some of those ideas and other people would, well, maybe be reacting very very strongly to them. So I think to be open about where we're coming from. But then go, let's just as sit under God's word, humble ourselves and go, let's just try and pay attention to the detail of this and acknowledge that this is God's voice speaking to us and we're on holy ground when we do this. So we need to be humble and submissive. And at the same time, I think we also, the kind of thirds, bit, we need to, we want to think about, how did this hit home when Paul was writing it? What were the issues there? And that will also help us when to see the context and the frameworks that the people in Ephesus, their preconceptions and their ideas and their life experience that they brought to this passage, as they heard it read for the first time, you know, just like we have got our preconceptions, those Ephesians have those worldly preconceptions and Paul, you know, kind of shatters them then and shatter them now. So we need to recognise our context, that context, and then go right now, what's going on here, what's happening in this passage and really be willing to kind of pay attention to and not have Paul's voice drowned out by the other voices that are in our ears. So slowly and gently submitting to God's Word. So it's a passage about submission, but we need to submit in our reading of it, don't we? Yeah.
Felicity: And I think a part of that, and I love what you're saying now, that ultimately we do want to sit in the word under the word. And I think in the pattern of the Bible study, not just this passage, but the habit of the Bible study as a whole, if everyone is used to getting into the word, sitting under it, like being eager to hear it, then when we get to the provocative passages, then there's actually no difference in that, but acknowledging, as you say, the baggage and the fraughtness that comes with these kind of passages, that actually we're gonna do what we normally do and hear what God is saying and work hard to hear the context and the words and to work out how it applies to us. And I think you're right. And it's kind of keeping those absolute priorities in place, isn't it? With gentleness and empathy and pastoral care. Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah A: Yeah, absolutely. And recognising where this falls in the letter, think it's so lovely what you do here on the podcast that you walk through the letter. So we see these passages, the difficult ones, not in isolation, but as part of Paul's whole vision for the church. It's just such a glorious vision. And this is about the church as well, because we tend to go, this is the household. All the rest is about the church, and they're two separate things rather than thinking church is made up of the people with all these connections and living out the faith within not just the community of the church but in their other communities that they're part of which might be made up of believers but might be made up of unbelievers as well. So the complexity of life there is we can understand the passage, the flow of the passage, the flow of the whole book and see how it applies to these different areas and see that they are all connected.
Sarah: And actually leaving people with that big picture and I think as a Bible study leader being able to rest in the tension and the grey that you might let people go away with in terms of their understanding, where they sit in relation to it, being able to rest in the big picture that you've given and trust the Lord to keep working through his word by his spirit as people go away from the study I think is really important, isn't it? Because actually you're not going to tie up all of the bows. You're not going to, you're not going to, you know, there's a lot there that's probably not going to happen in a study like this. But if you can keep putting this, this part of scripture into the bigger story of scripture, into the letter, into the bigger story itself, then you've been faithful in that haven't you and you trust the Lord to do his work in helping people to submit to what he says in that. Sarah, just as we kind of round up our conversation this has all been so so helpful. How does this part of Ephesians encourage you and how has it helped you to delight in Christ?
Sarah A: Oh, how's it encouraged me? think this, just seeing the Lord's care about these details of our lives, I think is so wonderful, isn't it? He cares that our marriages are Christ-focused. The bits that other people don't see, he cares about that. He cares about our, I mean, think it's like we're slightly jumping from slavery to work life, but he cares about that he cares about our parenting and he cares with love not with a kind of, I he's folding his arms and going well you're mucked up again there but he cares because he cares because this is all about the glory of Christ and he's given us such beautiful motivation. Yeah just sitting in this today and as I was thinking about this in advance. It was so sweet, I think, to see the Lord's care for our household. That's the heading, it? Our household care. that seeking to be faithful by the power of the Spirit in those details will bring him glory is part of our worship. So there's no area that is hidden that we can go, like the Lord doesn't care about that. He does care about that. And it fits into this big picture of how he's demonstrated his glory in this world. So it's a high calling, it's exciting isn't it that we've got this high calling that these bits of life matter, that he cares and that if we're married then somehow we're participating in this picture and if we're not married we're still participating in this picture of his saving love for the world. We're part of the church or if we're married we're all part of this beautiful union which is on display so it's just mind blowing I think it's really exciting.
Felicity: Yes, yeah. I love that. And that's something that we've talked about a lot actually as we've been going through Ephesians is just that the elevation of the ordinary in terms of what God is doing through the ordinary interactions. You know, a simple conversation, speaking truth in love, can build up the church, can benefit people. The simplicity of just doing marriage in a way that honours the Lord or doing parenting in this way is powerful. And that's counterculture and that's upside down of what of what the world would say, they're looking for the extraordinary. And I feel like a big thing that's been going on in Ephesians is drawing our attention to the ordinary through which God is amazingly, mind-blowingly at work and all the more amazing because we get it wrong, because we're sinners who are trying to work it out. And the reality being that this picture is beautiful and we will not make it quite as beautiful as this, but we're pursuing that beauty. I think that's just helpful to hear that we're in even the ordinariness of getting it right one day and wrong the next day or right one hour and wrong the next hour, then actually God is still working in that for these purposes that he's put out here.
Sarah A: Yeah it goes thinking back about chapter 2 verse 16 with God's handiwork that we made to do these good works which God prepared in advance for us to do so yeah sometimes we fail but we've got this calling to do these good works to be the wife or to be the daughter or to be the employee to be working whatever it is those are our good works and so they're caught up in this beautiful music that the Lord is composing and creating to bring him worship. And our little mistakes are kind of woven in and all covered over by his grace. So we have this higher calling, quite higher than our non-Christian friends, but also we have grace, that even though the high calling is higher, that actually when we fail and fall, we are held.
Sarah: Yeah, there's What an amazing note to end on, Sarah. Would you pray for us and our listeners as we close, just on that note of grace that you've just been talking about?
Sarah A: Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you have caught us up into your family, the Church. Thank you that you have given us good works prepared in advance for us to do. Thank you that you've given us your Spirit. Lord, we do pray that you'd help us to meditate on you and to live our lives in fear and trembling, working out our salvation for your glory. Help us if we're parents, if we're married. If we're employed, help us in these areas to bring glory to you, to do things, all things out of reverence for Christ. We pray in Jesus' and for his glory. Amen.
Felicity: Amen. Well, thank you, Sarah. What a joy to have you with us. I feel like we could have talked for hours about this. I hope for all of us it's a starter, a springboard into conversations with those around you and your real life people grab a cuppa and talk about this more. And I think that's part of it, isn't it? Not shying away from the conversation. It's worth wrestling with this and acknowledging that it can be a wrestler and that's okay. And that the Lord is at work in and through that. You can grab, Sarah has written a number of books. They're Clothed with Strength. Pause. Resilient Faith written with her husband Lewis. You can grab them from our resources page on our website. So go and visit the Ten of Those store there and we will be back for the final instalment, sadly without Sarah Allen but with Sarah Dargue. We'll be back for the final instalment of Ephesians next week. We will see you then.
Sarah: See you then, bye bye.
Sarah A: Bye bye.
Felicity: This episode is sponsored by Crossway.
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